Ciao Mein: A Clarion Call for Blendo Cuisine?

Blendo cuisine was supposed to be the hot trend of the ‘90s. So far, it’s been a fizzle.

But Ciao Mein would seem to sound a clarion call for blendo restaurants everywhere. Check the name, Italian/Chinese . . . even if Italian plus Chinese would be a more apt description.

Maybe you remember when this room was Morell’s, back when this hotel was the Irvine Hilton. Now it’s the Hyatt Regency Irvine, and management has decided that Morell’s was too pricey and conventional for the times. So it has become Ciao Mein, the fourth Ciao Mein in the Hyatt chain.

Here’s the irony: Morell’s was actually more blendo than Ciao Mein, specializing in food with distinct Franco-Japanese overtones. But I admire Hyatt’s spunk in going with Ciao Mein anyway, even if I do find the new restaurant’s concept somewhat forced. It isn’t every day that a hotel chain even attempts originality. Hotels have to please a wide spectrum of guests, and this concept is far from the mainstream.

The Irvine Ciao Mein is a beautiful, spacious room with a canny, offbeat design. Appointments are splendid: banquettes fashioned from plush-looking Italian fabrics, fabulous white linens, eye-bending op art Mikasa service plates, finger foods such as black sesame bread sticks and crispy noodles jumbled together in stunning black vases. Somebody spent some real money to make this restaurant chic, and it worked.

The tables are gloriously appointed too. The menu is a regal folder fashioned from chemically treated plastic--it looks like engraved copper. The stemware is gorgeous, and there are elegant hashi-oki (Japanese ceramic chopstick rests) for your wooden chopsticks. I propped my pasta fork up on the thing, just for a cheap thrill. It looked vaguely absurd.

About the time you start playing around like this, you notice the pitchers of extra virgin olive oil alongside bottles of Kikkoman Lite soy sauce. And that’s when you might begin feeling confused. Are linguine clams really the best complement to a dish like ten-ingredient fried rice?

I somehow doubt it. This is delicious food, but you’ll never convince me that man was intended to eat kung-pao calamari and fettuccine Alfredo at the same sitting. Not this man, anyway.

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Three chefs are responsible for this confusion: Mark Chillinsky, Kuo-Feng Chung and P.J. Coyne. Chillinsky and Chung are disciples of Five Feet’s Michael Kang, the man who brought creative Chinese cooking to Orange County. Coyne is a graduate of Rex in Newport and the Culinary Institute of America. Clearly, all three can cook.

The Mein platter proves that. This isn’t just a dish--it’s a statement about multiculturalism: Thai spring rolls with a light lemon grass dipping sauce, fried calamari, prosciutto, shiu mai , rice balls and bufala mozzarella. Everything on the dish save the heavily salted prosciutto is pleasantly neutral. The golden rings of calamari are wonderfully crunchy.

Some of the starters are rather ponderous, though. I’d avoid the Sichuan eggplant and thin-crust pizza. The mildly spiced eggplant absorbs too much of the oily brown sauce it is wokked in, sogging it beyond redemption. Thin crust pizza, in a word, isn’t.

But lobster soong, wonder of wonders, works like a charm. It’s a simple dish--delicately sauteed pieces of minced lobster mixed with chopped scallions and served with lettuce leaf tacos--but it hits all the right notes.

The wonderful grilled marinated shrimp--perhaps the only true hybrid on Ciao Mein’s menu--are actually barbecued, then wrapped up in pancetta and garnished with crumbled feta and sauteed spinach. Soy and anise in the marinade make these prawns into something Chinese; the bacon and cheese pull them westward.

The house soups are both steals; at $3 they are the least expensive items on the menu. The minestrone is delightful, thanks to a light swirl of pesto and a handful of beans. The generous hot and sour soup--enough for two--is chock-full of chicken meat, tofu, egg, black mushroom and bamboo shoot.

One of the best main dishes is the now-familiar kung pao chicken, which can be had with the addition of big shrimp. If you’ve ever had kung pao at Laguna’s Five Feet, you’ll recognize this saucy, peanut-rich version, served on an enormous stoneware platter.

Ten-ingredient fried rice is great, almost more meat than rice. The chefs use Thai jasmine rice for this one, more fragrant than Chinese rice and with twice the body. The shrimp and chicken are rounded out with stir fried beef, pork, scallions, bok choy and more.

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The Italian side of the menu is a bit less settled. The house pounded veal chop is like schnitzel on the bone with an oily, cheesy breading. It’s already quite heavy, so the bed of unctuously sweet cannellini beans on which it rests seems excessive. But that’s made up for by such dishes as grilled lamb chops and veal lemone, turned out with deft skill. The lamb chops are finished with garlic and rosemary. The tender veal comes with a good caper sauce.

The pastas are just so-so, because sauces are a bit ham-handed. The best, and lightest, would be penne arrabbiata , little pasta tubes with a spicy tomato sauce. Gnocchi in sun-dried tomato cream is on the gluey side. When it comes to noodles, I’m going for the stir-fried chicken lo mein, which clash less than the rest of the choices.

Now it’s show time. You can have such desserts as the Ciao Mein, a giant fortune cookie stuffed with banana mousse mounted astride macadamia nut ice cream and a foot-long pair of edible chopsticks (they’re pure chocolate). If that’s too much for you to handle, try the credible amaretto cheesecake, a dense chocolate pate embedded with whole raspberries or, simplest of all, a great plate of gelato and cookies, the kind of blending even a kid can relate to.

Ciao Mein is high-end moderate. Appetizers are $4 to $7. Main dishes are $11 to $17.

CIAO MEIN

17900 Jamboree Road, Irvine.

(714) 756-CIAO.

Mondays through Fridays, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Mondays through Saturdays, 6 to 10 p.m.

All major cards.